The concern of the caveman has always been to capture the spirit of animals to succeed in hunting them. Even art in the Stone Age began with realistic depictions of animals on cave walls because the caveman believed that by embodying the animals through painting, he could reach their spirit. They saw their survival in the survival of animals, and as Gardner points out in the book "Art Through the Ages," they did not set a boundary between imagination and reality. The primitive man believed that by incarnating the bodies of animals, he could possess them. In today's era, animals play an important role in our livelihood and imagination, and each of them is a symbol or source of truth in our lives. Many examples of the complexity of human and animal lives can be found in cinema, as animals include the first images of human life.
The appearance of physicality in a sociological, cultural, or historical sense can be found in various forms and to varying degrees in all cinematographic works. At the same time, the body in its phenomenological sense is less treated in the art of cinema. However, in some works, the body has been specially and independently studied and analyzed. How a person communicates with himself and the world around him through his body, how others perceive him with the effect of his body as an object, where his position is in the living world, and what his body's overall approach is in facing existence are the fundamental questions of this study.
The bodies of animals, as active subjects and objects in artistic creation, are accompanied by special meanings and codes. Merleau-Ponty, as a philosopher who created the theory of embodied perception, not only placed the human body and its complex relationship with self and existence at the center of his phenomenological studies but also paid special attention to the bodies of animals.
According to him, just as we can understand people's intentions or communicate with them through words or gestures, animals are not exempt from this rule. He considers animals, like humans, to be beings without a guide thrown into this world. Animals also face deficiencies or limitations due to their physical conditions. Just as animals played a fundamental role in the lives of early humans and engaged with the imaginations and realities of the early world, in today's era, animals also play an important role in our livelihoods and imaginations, each symbolizing or being a source of truth in our lives.
In the cinema, many examples of the complexity of the lives of humans and animals can be found, because animals include the first depictions of human life. The film "The Cow" by Dariush Mehrjui is an example of the complexity of two corporeal beings (humans and animals) that can have similar perceptions of existence.
The closeness and coexistence of Mash Hassan and his cow can be an example of the importance of the incarnation of animals for cavemen. As Merleau-Ponty admits, our knowledge of the behavior of animals as corporeal beings is limited, and according to phenomenologists, this issue can be reconsidered. From this point of view, the comparative study of Lascaux cave wall paintings and the film “The Cow” and the analysis of the behavior of primitive and contemporary humans can reach new approaches to the complex and physical relationship between humans and animals.
By comparing the cave paintings of early humans and Mehrjui's film "The Cow," one can understand the extensive relationship between humans and animals from ancient times to the present. Mash Hassan's goal in imitating the cow's physical actions is very close to the goals of the cave-dwelling human (hunter-artist), and both use private bodies to capture the spirits of animals. Both see their survival in the survival of the herds.
Mash Hassan's cow, like the painted pregnant cows, is a symbol of the people's belief in the fertility of livestock. Anything viewed from a human perspective inevitably takes on a human form, especially animals, which are also living beings with bodies. The phenomenological closeness of Mash Hassan to his cow stems from a reality rooted in prehistoric times. This close relationship may be because all material beings strive to achieve coherence in their world through sensory perception.
Bodily perception was the only means of communication between subjects/objects before the invention of writing. It also allows humans to rediscover within themselves fantasies and dreams, patterns of magical behavior, and ambiguous phenomena, and to better shape their personal and social relationships and find diverse forms of perception.